The Steel Guitar Forum

When the trial version of Paul's lessons were available, I burned through our data and we had to buy 'tokens' to keep our super incredible fast internet connection alive. There were some other issues that may have burned up our allowance, but I've had past issues of learning by download that ate up our data.
I tried using my phone because it measures data usage, but I don't know how to apply that to real life.
So.... Anyone know how much/many gigathingies a person studying Paul's course might expect to burn through, and how that will add up at the end of the month?
Patrick

Good news/Bad news, Patrick.

I'm in exactly your situation. I've had Hughes for 14 months and I'm still trying to balance my monthly allowances of 20 GB with my needs. I was worried about subscribing to Paul's thing only to learn that it ate up all my data and was going to cost a lot more than the tuition (in tokens) to use. In addition, my connection is not very fast (a big disappointment but it is what it is.)

Good news: It does NOT seem to make a major impact. The trial lessons had no problems with my connection speed and they did not break the bank. As a result, I paid for a year. And the little bit of time that I've spent with it, since, has caused no concern.

Bad news: ....is only that I have not yet spent enough time to give more definitive info. Nor can I in any way quantify in actual numbers how much data any of this does burn. But I am satisfied that it is far leaner than I had feared.

My regrets that I haven't yet gotten started and therefore can't get better info to you.

For folks with bandwidth limits on their ISP plans, you can choose to view at a lower-res option on a video by video basis. The video player has a setting where you can choose the Quality of the playback. Lower quality uses less bandwidth. 540p is still quite view-able especially if you do not have a super large screen.

The setting does NOT carry over from video to video though, so you do have to pick it each time. The default is 720p.

Hope this helps.

Thanks John. I'm not even sure if I was doing that but I certainly will in the future. My wifi laptop setup in the studio does NOT demand max def so this setting is certainly the way to go.

Patrick, at standard def resolution (as John suggests) I think the streaming bitrate would be somewhere around 5 megabits per second. That translates to about 1.13 gigabytes per 30 minutes.

I also use hughsnet. I watch youtube videos alot and i know i have surpassed my monthly alotment before. It does slow it down abit, but is still useable. I have never purchased extra coins in the past.

Thanks for the replies.
We only have 10 gigs/month anytime usage.
We have 50 gigs between 2am and 8am, but sleeping and getting to work make that difficult.
John Light, if you could post back here in a week or so with your findings, I'd sure appreciate it.
Patrick

Patrick, I spent a half hour this morning watching the first few C6 vids.

A total of 30 minutes (Intro thru to the Buddy Emmons setup).

At 360p (as opposed to John's suggestion of 540p---I'm totally satisfied with the quality on my laptop---if I were using a big screen I'd maybe feel differently).

Total consumption was 300MB for 30 minutes.

I understand that at your 10GB allotment that's a day's worth of data.


Just fyi, I had a 10GB plan -- I'd moved from the city with unlimited FIOS to the woods with...nothing....and it was pretty depressing. One day I was hashing out a billing issue with Hughes and they said hey, wanna upgrade to Gen5? The first I'd heard of this. I guess they've got new satellites and better capacity. I upgraded to a 20GB plan and I'm paying less than I was with the 10 even after paying for the upgrade (and agreeing to a 2 year contract.) They said that capacity could even increase in the future.

Thanks John,
That's very helpful information.
Numbers I can use!
Thanks again for all your help.
Patrick

About $50 /month for 10Gb
To watch Paul's lessons I'm better off in the Netherlands for about $35/month, no Gb limits and even with just 3Mbit speed over the old copper phoneline, no problems with the streaming

With best regards from Holland,

Ellio

I guess I'm spoiled with the Google Fiber! God only knows how much data streams in and out of my house on an hourly basis...

Perhaps in the future John Spaulding et al will allow watermarked downloads or something - that way those on restrictive data plans like Patrick described could set them to download during the wee hours and not eat up all their data.

Patrick, do you have a cell phone data plan? If so, and if it's more than the Hughes 10gb you could use your phone as a hotspot and connect your computer via that...

Thanks John L.
That's about the amount I showed on my phone data. I think the C6 teaser a couple of times was 30MB +/-.
My phone plan is 5 gigs and it's my back-up for my business if and when DSL craps out.
I'll check into Gen5. We just got a new router/modem unit that they replaced, but not sure what if any real upgrade to our service was.
Thanks again all!
Patrick